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Single-dose nifedipine was given to 13 phobic patients with increased generalized anxiety. Nifedipine failed to demonstrate anxiety-reducing effects on baseline anxiety ratings. Furthermore, in a subset of four patients, the drug failed to show an anxiolytic effect in exposure-related anxiety.

Because previous studies have documented the distorting effect of time of recall on the reporting of life events over a one-year period of time, the relation between various life event measures and time of recall over time periods greater than one year was examined in 44 patients with panic disorder and 44 control subjects. For both groups, time of recall was unrelated to any of nine life event measures. The implications of these findings for life event studies requiring retrospection greater than one year are discussed.

Dielectric losses were measured for lysozyme powders of varied hydration level by a dielectric-gravimetric technique in the frequency range of 10 kHz to 10 MHz. The relaxation showed an isotope effect and pH dependence, indicating that the inferred conductivity is protonic. The transport process is likely restricted to the surface of individual macromolecules and involves shifting of protons between ionizable side chain groups of the protein. The time constant of the relaxation shows cooperativity in its seventh-order dependence on bound protons. The process develops in the hydration region critical for the onset of the catalytic properties of the enzyme. The binding of a substrate increases the relaxation time by a factor of 2. These observations suggest that the megahertz dispersion reflects behavior at the protein surface, specifically the cooperative channeling of proton flow through the active site, that may be of particular significance for the enzymatic and other functional properties of proteins.

Experiments in mice treated with a single 10 mg/kg dose of doxorubicin (adriamycin) i.p. revealed considerable reduction in the incorporation of 3H-thymidine in DNA and of 3H-uridine in RNA, in the spleen and liver, and at mitochondrial and non-mitochondrial level in the heart. Although protein syntheses in the heart and spleen were not reduced by the drug to any great degree, they took 10 days to return to normal; conversely, liver protein syntheses were not inhibited at all and indeed presented signs of stimulation.

The authors examined the number, type, and effect of life events during the year before the onset of panic attacks in 44 patients with a Research Diagnostic Criteria diagnosis of panic disorder and 44 healthy control subjects matched for age, sex, and time of retrospection. The patients had significantly more life events, and these events had a more adverse impact on them. Furthermore, the types of events experienced by the patients were more typically distressing than those experienced by the control subjects. The patients reported events involving moves to other neighborhoods and/or cities far more frequently than did the control subjects.

The longitudinal course of panic disorder and its associated symptoms were investigated in thirty-eight patients. The temporal relationships among panic attacks, generalized anxiety, agoraphobia and depression are described. Similar and different biological alterations in the tricyclic-responsive disorders of primary depression and panic disorder are reviewed and discussed.

Eleven panic disorder patients who had experienced a major loss or separation in the year before they had their first panic attack were significantly more likely to develop a subsequent major depression than were 22 patients who had not suffered such a loss.